I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, but despite the unscheduled delay in proceedings posting during Mobile World Congress 09 seems appropriate…

A couple of weeks ago Waldemar Januszczak, the Sunday Times art critic wrote a damning review of the forth Tate Triennial; or rather he penned a damning feature on the state of the British art scene, which is currently on show at Tate Britain.

Admittedly a contemporary art retrospective wouldn’t ordinarily provide the stimulus for a DERT blog, but these are no ordinary times, and the review struck a chord.It was the concept of a triennial that prompted my thoughts to drift back to DERT, and over the past few weeks I’ve been mulling over the differences between the contemporary art world and that of the consumer tech industry.OK.OK.You might think that the differences are so stark that it shouldn’t take weeks to ‘mull over’, but bear with me…

Waldemar writes about “France in the 1860s, when the Paris salon became too powerful and the impressionist revolt needed to happen to revive art.The Tate is the salon of today: pompous, arrogant, all-powerful and utterly convinced of its superiority.”He refers to two exciting modern art movements that were a direct bi-product and reaction to the Tate’s pretentions (the Lisson Sculptors of the 1980s, and the YBA’s of the 1990s – Hirst, Emin and co.).

So how does this relate to DERT territory?Think of Damien Hirst (in his formaldehyde days, rather than encrusted skulls) as Spotify.Think of the Tate as the Brit Awards.Here is a company reacting against the accepted norm of the establishment (i.e. the music industry), and presenting a modern solution to a modern problem (i.e how to generate revenue, when the consumer demands free content).OK, so Hirst’s calf in a tank never resuscitated a flagging industry (well, unless you count the art market that boomed until recently) but you get my point.Tech Start-ups = young, revolutionary artists.

So back to Mobile World Congress.The very nature of the tech industry means that new pieces of ‘art’ are regularly showcased at trade events – CES, ISE, MWC etc etc. Start-ups clamour for noise at these shows and I suppose this is no different tohow the Impressionists were overlooked by the Paris Salon.However, my point isn’t really about the struggle of new kids vs the old dogs.It’s more that we always look to the future.We’re all concerned with the next big thing, the upgrade, the new must-have piece of kit. True, coverage of this year’s event in Barcelona has looked at how the show differs from last year, especially regarding turnout.But this is economic observation, rather than a result of the new technologies and services on show.

Looking to the future is natural when emerging technologies evolve so quickly.But what if we took the time to reflect, as the art world does?What if the tech community held a triennial where the technologies of the previous three years were presented?Sure, there would be no commercial sense in a brand showcasing products whose shelf-life had expired, but what lessons would we learn, what patterns would emerge between trends, what new technologies would have already disappeared?

Following the ruling, a few analysts (Arash @ Screen Digest, Nick Thomas @ Forrester/Jupiter) have come out and criticized the competition commission for a lack of foresight – Pirates must be delighted (Nick Thomas, Forrester).

And while the collaboration may be denied, the constituent players are still able to throttle competition: “Between ITV.com, Channel 4.com and Kangaroo’s core site, there will be little space left in the nascent online TV advertising market for the likes of Five, BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) and MTV. We believe the provisional findings suggest a lack of familiarity with online content markets.”

Was it a subscription archive service? Was it an ad-supported archive service? Was it a catch-up service? Was it both but in different windows? Was it free or paid? Would it feature US hit shows or not?

At some point during the 20 months of its short life, Project Kangaroo was one or all of these things. In many respects, it was the brainchild of a confused pre-“iPlayer 2.0” era…

…Kangaroo was a waste of time and effort on the part of both ITV and Channel 4. As the dust settles, the focus will rightly shift towards ITV Player and 4oD which, if the BBC iPlayer and Demand Five are anything to be measured by, will have to make up for lost time if they don’t want to get lost in the noise. “

It’s certainly set the major broadcasters over here back a few steps, but opened a window of opportunity for others and all agree the market will continue to become more competitive.

Research is always an interesting beast – ask the man on the street what his favourite programme is and you can be confident it’ll be most recent show he’s seen and enjoyed; with the most popular content still found on the (dominant) terrestrial channels, of course UK viewers will seem to value UK produced shows.

The real reason this hooker our interest is because the ruling came out the day after The Culture Show ran a brilliant piece by Greg Dyke on the success of HBO. The raft of high-quality, challenging shows coming out of HBO (the Wire, Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Desperate House Wives) is increasingly recognized and lauded over here, at stark comparison to the home-grown dirge of reality eye-wash and mediocre ‘safe’ material – It’s all chewing gum for the eyes! (unable to access iPlayer? check accompanying Guardian piece here).

Ultimately, the consumer demand for high-quality, coupled with the increasing awareness of online video, means that regardless of Kangeroo cancellations market growth is a certainty here.

To sort of quote the Spice Girls two could become one if Ticketmaster Entertainment and LiveNation merge. As the Wall Street Journal reports today:

The combined company would be called Live Nation Ticketmaster ; and would merge the world’s biggest concert promoter with the world’s dominant ticketing and artist management company.

History tends to show that no one really likes it when something gets too big: Jack and the Bean stalk, Ghost Busters Pillsbury Doughboy, Jessica Simpson. In the business world words like ‘anti-competitive’ and ‘monopoly’ tend to get bandied about and people get hacked off . ‘The Boss’ definitely isn’t happy about it:

“…the one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near monopoly situation in music ticketing. Several newspapers are reporting on this story right now. If you, like us, oppose that idea, you should make it known to your representatives.”

The other word that you tend to hear when things get too big is “antitrust” and its likely that this merger is unlikely to go ahead faced with such scrutiny. Its even rumoured that good ol Barak Obama will oppose the deal (I am sure it has nothing to do with the high profile support he recieved from The Boss during his electoral campaign….)

Our colleagues in Edelman Public Affairs in Washington have pulled together a really great analysis of Obama’s social media campaign. It takes a look at the tools used and the lessons that business can learn from his campaign. Defiantely worth a read: http://www.edelman.com/insights/

I feel sorry for little ol Channel 4. When I used to be a youngster it was without question the Channel to which I was glued. As a student I spent most mornings watching T4 and the weekend gormlessley absorbed by the Hollyoaks omnibus. Those were the days when I didn’t feel it was a waste of life to watch Big Brother, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Playing it Straight or An Average Joe. But when Simon and Miquita quit Pop World, it was all over for me.

I’m still holding onto my youth and am definitely not past it yet but feel like I can get my TV sustenance from elsewhere. I don’t actually have one but choose instead to watch on demand services from iPlayer, 4OD (I still have a penchant for the occasional property show), ITV and Five. This may be where the problem has arisen. TV ad revenues have been in decline since the 90s, cable and Internet give advertisers way more choice and this, combined with the ‘yoof ‘ of today watching TV less and less poor ol Channel 4 is now in a bit of a pickle. (Not, as Sandi Toksvig joked, because the bottom has dropped out of the property programme market)

So Ofcom have stepped in. Channel 4, without the monies from TV advertising to fund its public service broadcasting obligations, needs to become part of a bigger entity in order to act as young challenger/alternative voice to the Beeb and hopefully improve the standard of news, arts and current affairs programming. ITV and Five would be free of its public service obligations in order that they can focus on becoming strong commercial networks.

News reports seem to show that Andy Duncan, CEO of Channel 4 is pretty adverse to merging with Five. More recently a joint venture between Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide (the commercial arm of the BBC) which could see BBC Worldwide selling Channel 4s programmes abroad or working in partnership to for UKTV .

We’re left with the public service broadcasting equivalent of a cliff hanger. Come back next time to continue the story.

Bush’s time in the Oval Office aside, the last 8 years has seen a boom online (termed clumsily as 2.0).Truly though, the internet has really come alive in terms of social networks and new media services since Bush made himself comfortable in the White House.

Rory at the BBC has posted a really interesting blog, looking at how the landscape today differs from Bush’s inauguration all those years ago.

Coolest of all? CNN following up their election night hologram, by asking people in DC to take a photo at 12pm (EST), and email their photos in. Then they’re going to use “Microsoft Photosynth to create what could be an extraordinary 3D image.” This is a fantastic citizen journalist stunt, where ‘old’ media mobilises people on the ground to create something totally awesome.

Chris Nuttall at the FT wrote an interesting piece the other day, looking at a number of 3D technologies that are being shown at this year’s CES.

Further indication that 2009 is set to be the year of 3D comes via Contagious today – Pepsi and DreamWorks have collaborated on a 3D advert, to be aired during the infamous SuperBowl ad-breaks.

They’re distributing 125million free 3D spectacles so the yanks can enjoy the ad, which in a nod to collaborative money- saving will also feature a trailer for a new DreamWorks movie.

James Cameron has been talking about 3D movies as a solution to attract audiences to flagging cinemas for seemingly years now, though early trials left audiences feeling nauseous, I believe. Last year I was lucky enough to attend a screening of U2 in 3D at the Imax. The 3D experience was effective, stunning, awe-inspring; however, I’m yet to be convinced that it is anything other than novelty. I can’t help but think that the ‘awe-inspring’ effect distances a cinema audience – as the artifice of the movie is heightened – rather than fully immersing the spectator within the action and emotion of the movie.

Hopefully I’ll be proved wrong. It would seem that 3D TV for the home and mobile is gaining pace (Chris includes an interesting stat in his article following Quixel research into consumer demand for 3D), and the allure of 3D gaming should be obvious to even the most devout non-gamers.

It certainly will be interesting to see how the 3D story evolves this year.